Lead Bitcoin Developer Gavin Andresen Dismisses 'Selfish Mining' Vulnerability
Assuming you haven't already heard of a paper released by two researchers at Cornell University yesterday that suggested the Bitcoin currency is susceptible to a little something called 'selfish mining,' I will do my best to give you the Spark Notes version. The paper - put together by Ittay Eyal and Emin Gun Sirer - explains that rogue mining pools could possibly keep the discovery of a Bitcoin block private whilst other mining pools look for that very same block - expending mining resources. The point in keeping the block private is to allow the described 'selfish' mining pool to get....
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A paper released yesterday by researchers Ittay Eyal and Emin Gun Sirer at Cornell University suggested a subtle new way in which the bitcoin mining network could be vulnerable to a form of economic attack called 'Selfish Mining'. Gavin Andresen, the lead developer of Bitcoin, was quick to dismiss the paper and its contents. Executive summary of Cornell paper: not a big deal even assuming their analysis is correct (I'm not yet convinced). - Gavin Andresen (@gavinandresen) November 5, 2013. Although a similar attack called the 'Mining Cartel Attack' was proposed as early as 2010, the new....
Bitcoin's new lead developer Wladimir van der Laan tells CoinDesk via email he was "surprised" to be offered the role and hadn't expected Gavin Andresen to step down: "I had noticed that Gavin had been much less active in the Github project lately, but I did not expect him to step down as lead developer. But it makes sense, there is a lot more theoretical work with regard to Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general making it a full-time job just to keep up with that (and giving talks, travelling, and such). On the other hand, I have been effectively the maintainer of the code for quite a....
Gavin Andresen had some harsh words for the Bitcoin cloud mining industry on Reddit. Gavin Andresen, perhaps the most respected and well-known Bitcoin developer today, made a rather interesting statement about Bitcoin cloud mining the other day, and the strange thing is that it went basically unnoticed by the community as a whole. Redditor /u/zapt0 asked the /r/Bitcoin community about mining contracts and whether or not they could be solid investments, and most of the responses were rather negative when discussion came to the long term prospects of earning money through one of these cloud....
This situation becomes especially painful when considering how Satoshi Nakamoto himself appointed Gavin Andresen as being the one to take over the “reigns” of Bitcoin development Now that the Craig Wright debacle has calmed down again, there is still the pressing matter of what will happen with Gavin Andresen. After the Bitcoin Core team revoked his commit access, there seems to be no indication of restoring the Bitcoin developer to his precious status. A lot of people were surprised when Gavin Andresen of all people came forward and identified Craig Wright as being Satoshi Nakamoto. Even....
With Mike Hearn taking a step back from Bitcoin development to work for private blockchain startup R3, former Bitcoin Core lead developer Gavin Andresen indicated he might take over the lead of Bitcoin XT, the Bitcoin implementation programmed to increase the block-size limit through BIP (Bitcoin Improvement Proposal) 101. Andresen, who shifted his efforts to Bitcoin XT earlier this year, told Bitcoin Magazine, reluctantly: "I might take over lead of XT, but I don't want to." It was announced last week that Hearn recently joined R3 as lead platform engineer, where the Google veteran and....